Anton Hein's Anti-Mormon Website article on Bible and Book of Mormon

In browsing the web, I found the following article on this website of Anton Hein:

http://str.org/free/commentaries/apologetics/bible/borbom.htm

I'll give my commentary throughout - Kerry A. Shirts

The Bible or the Book of Mormon?

Gregory Koukl
Saturday
October 19, 1996
Greg:
The question of the authority of the Bible and its divine inspiration can be stated very simply: Is the Bible a book given by God to man, or is it a book produced by man--and merely by man--about God? Those are the only two options I think we're faced with. The Bible is either a divine product, or it isn't a divine product, but a mere product of human thinking. If it isn't a divine product, then human authorship is the whole story.
Kerry:
We understand the Bible to have been written by man, as well as inspired men, which is the definition of scripture incidentally. This either/or set up is not quite accurate. Brigham Young said it the very best: "When I first commenced to preach to the people, nearly forty years ago, to believe the Bible was the great requisite. I have heard some make the broad assertion that every word within the lids of the Bible was the word of God. I have said to them, "You have never read the Bible, have you?" "O, yes, and I believe every word in it is the word of God." Well, I believe that the Bible contains the word of God, and the words of good men and the words of bad men; the words of good angels and the words of bad angels and words of the devil; and also the words uttered by the ass when he rebuked the prophet in his madness. I believe the words of the Bible are just what they are; but aside from that I believe the doctrines concerning salvation contained in that book are true, and that their observance will elevate any people, nation or family that dwells on the face of the earth." (Journal of Discourses, Vol.13, p.175 - p.176, Brigham Young, May 29, 1870)
Greg:
The way you can attempt to answer the question, "Is the Bible really inspired"--does it have a divine origin--is to see whether the Bible has marks of the supernatural.
Kerry: We don't doubt that the Bible is inspired in many places. But as Brigham has realistically understood, there are also problems in the book, since it was recorded also by fallible man. This does not make the Bible a false book in Mormonism's eyes though as is falsely understood.
Greg:
Your Bible (is) a translation directly from the best Greek manuscripts we possess. It's a direct translation from the Greek to the English, a one-step process.
Kerry:
This is simply false. In some cases it is translated from Aramaic into Greek and then into English. George Lamsa notes that "Jesus spoke the Galilean dialect of Aramaic...Paul preached the Christian gospel written in Aramaic...His native language was written Aramaic... ("Introduction" in "Holy Bible: From the Ancient Eastern Text," i.e. the Peshitta, p. xi)
Greg:
It isn't enough to simply assume the Bible's authority from the beginning. Christians assume from the get-go that the Bible is God's word, and frequently they won't take it any further than that. Unfortunately, that isn't going to be good enough for most people. Many non-Christians assume from the get-go the Bible's not inspired. They revere the book, or respect it in some fashion, but as for it being the word of God? No. It's written by men and men make mistakes. That's their view.
Kerry:
And in many cases they are strictly correct. On the other hand, our take on it is that men inspired of God to write the scripture STILL made mistakes, but that doesn't make their writings less scripture, just not perfect scripture. In fact I can refer you to many sources which discuss the ideas that the writers in the Bible did NOT write what had actually happened, but reshaped the Bible to fit into what they thought happened, based on their own knowledge and experience, none other than the world class scholar Raymond Brown in his "Responses to 101 Questions on the Bible," Paulist Press, 1990, discusses how ALL the Gospel writers wrote from their own theological predispositions, "Thus there was no attempt to report with simple, uncolored factuality what Jesus had said and done. Rather the report was enlightened by a faith that the preachers wanted to share." (p. 56). "...none of the evangelists was himself an eyewitness of the ministry of Jesus...They had heard about Jesus from others and were organizing the tradition they had received into a written Gospel." (p. 57). The Gospels are a distillation from an earlier tradition about Jesus "This distillation was organized, edited, and reshaped by an evangelist in the last third of the first century in order to address the spiritual needs of Christian readers he envisaged." (p. 58). P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., "Textual Criticsm: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible," Fortress Press, 1986, p. 58 notes that "there are a few places where the scribes seem to have made changes with the intent to alter the meaning of the passage." John Shelby Spong, "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism," HarperSanFrancisco, 1992, p. 190 noted that "every written work is but one half of a dialogue..." and he goes on to show the very serious problems that the inerrantists have concerning the Bible. "Paul cannot be taken literally. He did not write the word of God. He wrote the words of Paul." (p. 105). And more to the point, Spong notes Gal. 5:12; Phil. 3:2; Col. 3:22; 2 Thess. 3:10; Col. 3:18; 1 Cor. 11:6-9; Gal. 1:9; Rom. 11:8; 1 Cor. 14:35; Rom. 11:13, 14, and notes that "...these words make no claim to be the words of God. They are rather the words of Paul, a first-century Jewish convert to Christianity, lifted verbatim out of his voluminous correspondence." (pp. 91f). Now while on the whole I personally do not accept all of Spong's conclusions or his analysis on every point, his points against the Bibliolaters, and inerrantists are simply powerful. I have yet to see them adequately dealt with by the inerrantists. James Barr in his book "Fundamentalism," The Westminster Press, 1978, discusses the Fundamentalist view of the Bible and the serious problems with it. "What fundamentalists insist is not that the Bible must be taken literally, but that it must be so interpreted as to avoid any admission that it contains any kind of error. In order to avoid imputing error to the Bible, fundamentalists twist and turn back and forward between literal and non-literal interpretation...In order to expound the Bible, as thus inerrant, the fundamentalist interpreter varies back and forward between literal and non-literal understandings, indeed he has to do so in order to obtain a Bible that is error-free." (p. 40). C. Randolph Ross, "Common Sense Christianity," Occam Publishers, 1989, p. 240 notes "...that only portions of it [the Bible] are in fact canonical...But not all of these Scriptures are 'canonical' in the sense of being authoritative for us." And I find a most interesting confession of a Catholic scholar concerning the doctrine of the Trinity, a doctrine held by most Protestants as well. This isn't a mistake in the Bible of a true doctrine already in the Bible, this is a man-made doctrine added to the Bible later! The Old Testament definitely does not have the trinity. "the New Testament does not specify the terms of the relationship between Father and Son, nor among Father and Son and Holy Spirit. It assumes only that there is some relationship..." He then cites Matt. 11:27; John 1:1; 8:38; 10:38; 1 Corinth. 2:10; John 14:16, 26; 17:3; Gal. 4:6; John 15:26; 16:7; Mark 12:1-12; John 1:1, 14; 2 Corinth. 4:4; Hebrews 1:3, and then notes something incredibly interesting! "...none of these texts individually, nor all of them together, express a theology of the Trinity as such." He then rather honestly notes that "It took three or four hundred years before the Church began to make the proper distinctions, to go beyond the formulations of the Bible [note this!] and the creeds alone, and to see how the 'economic Trinity' and the 'immanent Trinity' are one and the same...we cannot read back into the New Testament, much less into the Old Testament, the more sophisticated trinitarian theology and doctrine which slowly and often unevenly developed over the course of some fifteen centuries." (See Richard P. McBrien, "Catholicism: Study Edition," Winston Press, 1981, p. 347). F.F. Bruce, "The Spreading Flame," Eerdman's, 1958, flat out admitted that the word "homoousios" (of the same substance) which was judged heretical, later became the very hallmark of orthodoxy! (p. 255). In fact, this word was not even in the Bible! (p. 306). Also J.N.D. Kelly, "Early Christian Doctrines," Harper & Row, 1978, Chapters IX-X has an excellent discussion on the Trinity and its development. And quite frankly two excellent texts Christians would do better at learning about expecially concerning the nature of the Bible and the arguments concerning its canon and historical value and supposed inerrancy are Raymond F. Collins, "Introduction to the New Testament," Doubleday & Co., 1983; and Werner George Kummel, "Das Neu Testament: Geschichte der Erforschung seiner Probleme," 1970. The ideas of canon and theology and the nature of the Bible and how the ancient writers wrote their scriptures and with what intents are analyzed in excellent fashion by John H. Sailhamer, "Introduction to Old Testament Theology," Zondervan Publishing, 1995; and Baruch Halpern, "The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History," Harper & Row, 1988. All these scholars simply demonstrate that the fundamentalist view of the Bible, i.e., the view you are espousing, is grossly inadequate and wildly incorrect.
Greg:
Now, I think somebody who takes this view has to at least acknowledge, first of all, that they didn't actually reason to the conclusion that the Bible was not inspired. Unless, of course, they thought it was reasonable to conclude that since men were involved, the Bible must have errors.
Kerry:
Which is rather easily proven to be true....
Greg:
That certainly doesn't follow, that since human beings may be prone to err, they're necessarily erring in the things they write about God.
Kerry:
Yet they utilize all sorts of metaphors about God in trying to describe him as does Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon in their magnificent description of their vision of Jesus Christ in the Kirtland Temple in D&C 76, and 133:22.
Greg:
It may be that they are, but it doesn't automatically mean they are. It seems to me you have to look a little further before you can draw that conclusion. You have to look at the information itself. You have to look at the evidence. Men can err, but did they err in this case?
Kerry:
You up for Textual Criticism then? The Christian scholars have been rather busy on this as have the Jewish scholars and there is much in their favor on this.
Greg:
Another thing that this view doesn't take into consideration is that the Bible itself claims to be God's word.
Kerry:
Which we also believe so there is no problem here.
Greg:
Now, of course, that doesn't make it true, per se. We've got to go further than the mere claim. But it is significant that many who don't believe in Christianity still respect the Bible. This book they respect makes this claim about itself over and over again, and if the book is worthy of respect, then certainly the claim is worthy of respect. It's worthy of careful consideration.
Kerry:
John Welch demonstrated many ancient concepts found in the Book of Mormon to a college professor of his which simply impressed him no end. His article "A Book You Can Respect" is worthy of your attention since this is your attitude with the Bible which I also agree with incidentally.
Greg:
I think the way to answer the question is to see whether the Bible has the mark of the supernatural--whether it has God's "signature" on it--or not, or whether it simply seems to be a book just given by man, having all the marks of natural human beings, and the limitations thereof, and no sign of the supernatural. That's the tact I take in my defense for the authority of the Scriptures. I give some reasons why I think the Bible is supernatural and not natural. It's a book given by God to man, not merely a book by man about God.
Kerry:
We do the same with the other scriptures that God has so lovingly given us...
Greg:
But, inevitably, what's going to happen is, even if you make your case, someone is going to say, "All right, even if I accepted that in the originals--the autographs--we have an accurate representation of God's word, we don't have those documents anymore. In fact, they've disappeared and now we only have copies of copies of copies of copies." Or, sometimes people put it this way: "The Bible's been translated and retranslated so many times we can't trust what we have now."
Kerry:
And in every single case this is demonstrable fact. Are you prepared to defend that it isn't?
Greg:
Well, that's not the truth of the matter. Your Bible--your New American Standard, New International Version, King James, New King James, etc.--is not a translation of a translation of a translation. It's a translation directly from the best Greek manuscripts we possess.
Kerry:
And NONE of them originals and no two are exactly alike in their exact wording either and we have over 8,000 copies of copies of manuscripts. You are fundamentally wrong on this. Consider some views of Bible scholars you apparently are unaware of:
Bruce M. Metzger, "The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration" notes that "a group of correctors working at Caesarea entered a large number of alterations into the text of both Old and New Testaments." (p. 46).
""The whole of Matthew's Gospel as far as xxv, 6 is lost, as well as the leaves which originally contained John 6:50-58, 52, and 2 Cor. 4:13-xii, 6." (p. 46).
"Unfortunately the beauty of the original writing has been spoiled by a later corrector..." (p. 47).
"All known witnesses of the New Testament are to a greater or less extent mixed texts, and even the earliest manuscripts are not free from egregious errors..." (p. 246)
Eldon Jay Epp and Gordon D. Fee, "Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism," notes that
"There are places where the original text is not so certain..." (p. 16).
WITHOUT EXCEPTION, "all of the oldest Greek MSS had been corrupted by interpolation..." (p. 149).
"The great fault of contemporary NT textual criticism is that IT CANNOT offer us TOTAL CERTAINTY as to the ORIGINAL NT text." (p. 189, my emphasis).
Even after scribal errors have been eliminated, "there remains a text of outstanding (though not absolute) purity." (p. 128).
Leon Vaganay/Christian Bernard-Amphoux, "An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism,"
"corrections were made boldly, things were added and things omitted..." (p. 57, 80, 81 - scribes felt free to modify texts to fit their own views of the scriptures!)
Greg:
It's a direct translation from the Greek to the English, a one-step process. So, they miscast the problem. But they still have a legitimate concern about the issue of change.
Kerry:
You are also wrong about a direct translation, see above.
Greg:
I addressed this issue in a talk this morning ("Has God Spoken?"), and afterwards a friend told me about his visit to a Mormon temple in Utah, how he was taken aside and interviewed about his own religious beliefs. It was a gentle attempt at evangelizing by a Mormon representative there.
My friend has used Stand to Reason materials and has heard the radio show, and he was ready with some very good responses to the Mormon woman about the authority of the Scriptures. One of the things she came back with is, "Yes, we believe the Bible is inspired insofar as it's properly translated."
Now, this is a key point Mormons make, and they make it over and over again. I'm not sure why it's so important to make that point because it's uncontroversial. As a Christian, I would have to agree with it. I don't believe in a Bible that's improperly translated; I believe in the authority of the Bible if it's properly translated.
Kerry:
Do you then throw out the improperly translated portions? Are you not seeing the grave difficulty your approach presents you? There are scholars who are capable of showing you that most of what we supposedly know about Jesus in the New Testament is improperly translated, are you going to reject Jesus for that? Bart D. Ehrman - "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament", Oxford Univ. Press, 1993, 314pp, discusses MANY if not ALL of the Christological controversies in the early Christian movement shortly after Jesus and has some simply shocking conclusions based on your statement above. You would simply throw Jesus out! You simply MUST be careful with your approach and certainly re-look it since your quandary is not a desirable thing to be sure. See my website at http://www.cyberhighway.net/~shirtail/orthodox.htm for a rather full review of Ehrman's text.
Greg:
But, you see, Mormon's take a further step I don't take because I know better.
Kerry:
You have not demonstrated you understand much concerning the Bible at all so far. And you certainly have misunderstood the Mormon view of inspired prophets and the mistakes of men in the scriptures also.
Greg:
They immediately presume, as does the man on the street, that the Bible has been changed down through the ages and that we can't trust what we have now.
Kerry:
We do not "presume" anything, but KNOW that man has changed the text through the ages. Perhaps a few more scholars and you'll begin to see how vastly undereducated you appear on this.
Emanuel Tov, "Textual Criticsm of the Hebrew Bible,"
The Masoretes had preserved a text in the Hebrew Bible, which had already been corrupted! (p. 9, 28ff).
Samaritans added their own theological biases to the scriptures (p. 19).
words were added that change the meaning of biblical passages (pp. 57, 63, 65, 60).
Theological concepts of God were ADDED to the scriptures (p. 127f).
There is a LARGE SCALE differences between the manuscript witnesses, not minor mere variations (p. 177).
Scribes took the liberty of changing the manuscripts as they felt suited to (p. 189)
Scribes deliberately altered the contents of the manuscripts and scriptures (pp. 258, 262, 306, 269, 290)
EVERY CHAPTER in the Bible has CHANGES! (p. 293f)
Stanley R. Maveety, "The Glossary in the Rheims New Testament of 1582", in the "Journal of English and Germanic Philology," Vol. 61, 1962,
"Tyndale was guilty of DELIBERATELY ***MISTRANSLATING*** the Bible in order to conform to Luther doctrine... (p. 566).
The Protestants were guilty of adding words to the scriptures in order to condemn Catholic doctrines (p. 572)
Greg:
I want to give you a couple of reasons why that objection is disingenuous coming from a Mormon. I want to give you some tools to respond to it.
Kerry:
You respond to the above and you'll be light years towards your goal.....
Greg:
The Mormons say that the Bible is God's word insofar as it is properly translated. Certainly, I agree with that. I don't know how anybody could disagree with it. Why do they make such a fuss over something as obvious as that? Because they're convinced it isn't properly translated because the texts we possess have been corrupted through transmission over the years.
Kerry:
As is each and every Bible scholar who works with the Bible manuscripts so we Mormons find ourselves in outstandingly excellent company here, while you Christians continue to flounder with false assumptions about the text of the Bible.
Greg:
Several years ago I was staying with a Mormon family for a couple of days and had an opportunity to check out their bookshelf. I pulled down a doctrinal book. This book wasn't a popular Mormon treatment, but one of their own theological works written by one of their chief theologians named McConky, I believe.
Kerry:
It would help your credibility if you would bother to learn the proper spelling of the names of the Mormon scholars and Apostles you utilize. Otherwise if you are either too lazy or too sloppy to do so, how on earth can we begin to try and take you seriously?
Greg:
I paged through it and got to the section on the reliability of the Bible. There I found the rule just as I've quoted it above, but was stunned to also find the Bible summarily dismissed in the next sentence. This Mormon theologian claimed--totally contrary to fact--that the Bible has been changed so many times in its copying and recopying down through the years that no one knows what the original was like.
Kerry:
And he has the FULL SUPPORT of every single Bible scholar who works with the Bible manuscripts. THERE ARE NO ORIGINALS. ALL are COPIES OF COPIES. So why do you bluster and bluff so?
Greg:
I was actually shocked to see a sophisticated theological work by a principle Mormon theologian offer such an academically lame response to this issue.
Kerry:
Then why do you not drop the names and references to scholars who claim, like your claiming, that originals exist? I have quoted many Bible scholars and can literally increase this 100 fold, where are your sources?
Greg:
This is a question in the field known as "lower criticism," or "textual criticism." The goal of the textual critic is to reconstruct ancient manuscripts from surviving copies.
Kerry:
What? Why not go to the originals? Because THERE ARE NONE, yet above you take McConkie to task for saying that! Make up your mind.
Greg:
The issue of biblical textual reconstruction has been discussed time and time again by secular scholars. The academic evidence shows it's an open and shut case, not in favor of the Bible's corruption, but rather in favor of the Bible's textual purity.
Kerry:
I challenge you to back that statement using scholars. You are blatantly misstating the case. I present a part of a paper I have written dealing with just this issue. I am reviewing the rather ridiculous arguments of Jim Spencer, another anti-Mormon who knows nothing of Textual Criticism nor is familiar with the relevant literature, much like yourself:
Leon Vaganay and Christian - Bernard Amphoux say there are over 5,000 Greek manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts, which have possibly 250,000 variants, and "the fact is that it would be difficult to find a sentence, even part of a sentence, for which the rendering is consistent in every single manuscript. That certainly gives plenty of food for thought!"[65] Changes have been made, and what's more, these changes have been deliberate, have been done by sloppy, unprofessional scribes, and have actually been doctrinal in nature in quite a few more cases than we have ever been led on to believe.[66] There are no pristine copies of any of the scriptures as Mr. Spencer assumes, and exactly as Orson Pratt had elaborated on many years ago. The Mormons have correctly understood the nature of the Bible from the start. A Bible scholar says "No copy of an ancient composition is pristine...copying in other words, is a source of both survival and corruption for a text...such a text, because it has been exposed so often to the danger of copying, is especially liable to corruption."[67] Joseph Smith said "I believe the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers. Ignorant translators, careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests have committed many errors."[68] Each and every one of those points in that statement have been verified explicitly, as I will show, using the finest Bible scholars in the world, while Jim Spencer's view is blatantly contradicted, not only by textual criticism, but historical criticism, and redaction criticism, nay, but by every serious study of the Bible.
Mr. Spencer claims that the original can be known with certainty, yet one of the finest textual critics is on record as saying, within just the last couple years no less, that among textual critics in the last 40 years that there is not even a certainty that the Masoretic text is original! It is, rather, "one witness of the biblical text, and its original form was far from identical with the original text of the Bible as a whole."[69] In fact, There was a complex of texts, none of which were all alike, directly against Mr. Spencer's claim.[70] Bleddyn J. Roberts also acknowledges that "...there never was really a text which could be designated as the Masoretic text."[71] In fact, directly opposing Mr. Spencer's claim, Bible scholars have acknowledged that the Masoretes preserved a text which had already been corrupted earlier on!And if the Masoretic text was the original of the Bible we still have to ask, in light of the evidence, which Masoretic text?[72] Mr. Spencer is blissfully ignorant of James A. Sanders, simply one of the finest Bible scholars to ever grace the arena, of saying "I think it is time for us to stop fooling the people, making them think that there is just one Bible and that our Bible committee got closer to it [the urtext, or original] than their committee did." He ends by saying that there have been differences between the manuscripts all along and that those who believe in the infallibly correct and perfect Bible [Jim Spencer all the way here folks!] are wishfully thinking. Its time to get a little more realistic concerning the true nature of the Bible.[72, again]
The Christian Fundamentalist view of the Bible is not in agreement with current Bible scholarship, especially regarding the Masoretic text as the original Bible, nor has any text been perfectly preserved. Who is Mr. Spencer using? The annoying lack of references here is Spencer's downfall. The subjectively (remember this is bad in Mr. Spencer's eyes) states an unsupported assumption based on a mistaken Orthodox Christian view of the Bible. Mr. Spencer would have done well to understand Vaganay and Amphoux's point that "determining the original form in these cases [of the source variants] is a delicate business and the critic who has too much confidence in his own personal preferences is in the greatest danger of making a mistake."[73] Mr. Spencer would have done well had he heeded A. E. Housman's advice and wisdom as well. He says textual criticism is not susceptible to "hard and fast rules," and that if one pretends to have them and use them (Mr. Spencer here all the way!) then "you will have false rules, and they will lead you wrong; because their simplicity will render them inapplicable to problems that are not simple..."[74] In fact, we are told today, by Bible scholars, no less, that "...75% of what the average Christian or Jew 'thinks' about the Bible is interpretation and not scriptural at all... Origen, Philo, and perhaps some contemporary evangelicals find their justification in the belief that the essential or 'real meaning' of the texts is spiritual and that what it literally says is, so to speak, a veil cloaking that meaning. So long as some form of that opinion continues to influence biblical study, what the Bible means will 'mean' more than what it says."[74, again]
Mr. Spencer oversimplifies textual criticism in order to rid it of its central finding, which is, of course, that no two manuscripts are alike and the Bible has not been perfectly preserved as Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, Parley P. Pratt, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and every other intelligent Mormon scholar has known since at least the late 1840's.
More to the point. Vaganay and Amphoux show that in order to determine a correct reading among all the manuscripts one must compare the number of witnesses as well. However, "Non nemerantur sed ponderantur. A fault may be copied as many times as you like, you will never make a correct reading out of it."[75] In line with this and that of the general character of the witnesses, "a correct manuscript may preserve a faulty text if it faithfully reproduces a manuscript which is itself the result of a bold revision, full of tendentious alterations."[76] Emanuel Tov, P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., Frank Moore Cross, Bruce M. Metzger, Eldon Jay Epp, Gordon D. Fee, and a host of other textual critics have demonstrated this copying of errors conclusively. In fact, Hugh Nibley demonstrated this point which powerfully confirms Joseph Smith's idea of the Bible when he said that some old Jew certainly changed the very first word in the very first verse of the Bible, and we have had the corruption through copying ever since, regardless of how lously Mr. Spencer howls against the idea![77]
And make no mistake about it, Mr. Spencer wants to disqualify textual criticism as he concludes, by using textual criticism, that the Bible has been perfectly preserved, which tenet textual criticism absolutely destroys. James Barr, in fact, has shown how Fundamentalists use textual criticism, not in order to appear to be open-minded, but in order to discredit textual criticism.[78] The trick for Fundamentalists is to explain how errors got into a completely inerrant, perfectly preserved, perfectly written book. As Barr explains it, either the Holy Spirit inspired an incorrect statement, and if He did so once, there is no guarantee that it did not happen many times, because then inspiration is no guarantee of truth. Or else, the Holy Spirit did not inspire the passage of scripture which has an error in it, in which case, there may be others uninspired, and hence "we cannot know that the entire scripture is inspired."[79] This is exactly the point Orson Pratt was making in the quote that Mr. Spencer used in Have You Witnessed to a Mormon Lately?, (p. 101), though Mr. Spencer, being a Fundamentalist, failed to understand Pratt's point, though no Mormon has. Mormons are not in the minority here at all on this issue. Mormons are attacked as not believing the Bible and attacking it, when in reality, what is being attacked is exactly these incorrect views of the Bible that Fundamentalists hold to, which have been completely undone by Bible scholars, even to the Christians' exacerbation.
The Fundamentalist, such as Mr. Spencer, cannot have it both ways, that there are errors, but that they are insignificant to the meaning of the scripture. Mormonism takes a middle ground, as do Bible scholars today. Scripture was inspired as originally given and written down, but sometimes evil and designing men changed some of it to fit their preconceptions and their own notions of what doctrines ought to say. Other parts, they threw out, or rewrote, including entire books of scripture ones held sacred to ancient Jews and Christians alike! This is amply documented folks![80]
ENDNOTES
65. Leon Vaganay & Christian-Bernard Amphoux, Initiation a la critique textuelle du Nouveau Testament, (An Introduction to NewTestament Textual Criticism) translated by Jenny Heimerdinger, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 2.
66. See Stanley R. Maveety, "The Glossary in the Rheims New Testament of 1582," in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 61, 1962, pp. 562-577, for Sir Thomas More and William Tyndale deliberately translating the Bible to reflect their own theologies and fir their own preconceptions of what the scripture should say; Also P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., Textual Criticism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986, pp. 11f for Erasmus not changing an error in the Bible because he was so used to it, even after it was proven to be incorrect!
67. P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., Ibid., p. 12.
68. Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (hereafter TPJS), Compiled by Joseph Fileding Smith, Deseret Book, 22nd printing, 1973, p. 327.
69. Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992, p. 170. For interesting Book Review, see Bible Review Magazine, Aug. 1993, pp. 11f.
70. Tov, Ibid., p. 170.
71. Bleddyn J. Roberts, "The Old Testament: Manuscripts, Texts and Versions," in John Maier and Vincent Tollers, eds., The Bible in its Literary Milieu, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1979, p. 221. Cf. John Allegro's invaluable discussion in his book, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reappraisal, Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, reprinted 1966, pp. 59-83; Also Frank Moore Cross, "The Text Behind the Text of the Hebrew Bible," in Herschel Shanks, ed., Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, New York: Random House, 1992, pp. 139-155; Frank Moore Cross, "Light on the Bible From the Dead Sea Caves," in Shanks, Ibid., pp. 156-166; Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version, New York: Vintage Books, 1993, pp. 101-105, 155-158; Hugh Nibley, "Controlling the Past," in the Improvement Era, Jan. 1955- June 1955, discussing how scribes have changed the Bible and when older and more correct texts have been found, they were thrown out because they didn't fit! Cf. Manfred Barthel, Was Wirklich in der Bibel Steht, (What the Bible Really Says), Avenel, New Jersey: Wings Books, 1992, p. 15 for his claims in confidence of translation because we have the original text. According to Tov, Ibid., (p. 330, 195) The Masoretic text did not triumph over other texts, (p. xxxviii) where the Massoretic text and the Biblical text is not identical.
72. Tov, Ibid., pp. 9, 28f, 11, 21-25. James A. Sanders, "Understanding the Development of the Biblical Text," in The Dead Sea Scrolls After Forty Years, Biblical Archaeology Society, Symposium Oct. 27, 1990, p. 71.
73. Vaganay, Ibid., p. 83.
74. Bruce M. Metzger, "The Practice of New Testament Textual Criticism," in Maier and Tollers, The Bible in its Literary Milieu, p. 244. See also Morton Smith and R. Joseph Hoffman, What the Bible Really Says, HarperSanFrancisco, 1989, pp. 242f.
75. Vaganay & Amphoux, Ibid., p. 62.
76. Vaganay, Ibid., p. 64.
77. Hugh Nibley, "Controlling the Past," in Improvement Era, March, 1955, pp. 152f.
78. James Barr, Fundamentalism, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Westminster Press, 1978, pp. 279-303.
79. Barr, Ibid., p. 302.
80. Manfred Barthel, What the Bible Really Says, noted that originally there were over 80 Gospels!, p. 16; Hartmut Stegeman, "Is the Temple Scroll a Sixth Book of the Torah - Lost For 2,500 Years?" in Herschel Shanks, ed., Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1992, Ch. 10; Ronald S. Hendel, "When the Sons of God Cavorted With the Daughters of Men," in Shanks, Ibid., Ch. 13; The Lost Books of the Bible, and the Forgotten Books of Eden, World Bible Publishers, no date; David R. Cartlidge & David L. Dungan, eds., Documents for the Study of the Gospels, Revised and enlarged, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994; James A. Sanders, "Understanding the Development of the Biblical Text," in The Dead Sea Scrolls After Forty Years, Biblical Archaeology Society, 1990, pp. 57-73; Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, Vintage Books, 1981; Craig A. Evans, Noncanonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation, Hendrickson Publishers, 1992; Willis Barnstone, The Other Bible, HarperSanFrancisco, 1984; Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, Doubleday, 1987; Burton L. Mack, The Lost Gospel:The Book of Q and Christian Origins, HarperSanFrancisco, 1993; Robert J. Miller, ed., The Complete Gospels, Polebridge Press, 1992; Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development, Trinity Press International, 1990; Robert M. Grant, The Formation of the New Testament, Harper & Row, 1965; Edgar J. Goodspeed, The Story of the New Testament, Univ. of Chicago Press, 17th edition, 1971; David Rosenberg, Harold Bloom, The Book of J, Grove Weidenfeld, 1990; Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?, Harper & Row, 1987; Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road, HarperSanFrancisco, 1993; Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism, Basil Blackwell, 1992; Simone Petriment, A Separate God: The Christian Origins of Gnosticism, HarperSanFrancisco, 1990; James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols., Doubleday, 1985; R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, 2 vols., Oxford at Clarendon Press, 9th edition, 1979; Hugh Nibley, The Book of Enoch, Deseret/FARMS, 1986; George W.E. Nickelsberg, ed., Studies on the Testament of Abraham, Society of Biblical Literature, 1976; Eta Linnemann, "Is There a Gospel of Q?" in Bible Review, Aug. 1995, pp. 18-23, 42, arguing no; Stephen J. Patterson, "Q, The Lost Gospel," in Bible Review, Oct. 1993, pp. 34-41, 61; "An Interview with David Noel Freedman: How the Hebrew Bible & the Christian Old Testament Differ," in Bible Review, pp. 28-39; Robert J. Miller, "The Gospels that Didn't Make the Cut," in Bible Review, Aug. 1993, pp. 14-25; Adam S. Van der Woude, "Tracing the Evolution of the Hebrew Bible," in Bible Review, Feb. 1995, pp. 42-45; James C. Vanderkam, "Jubilees: How it Rewrote the Bible," in Bible Review, Dec. 1992, pp. 32-39, 60; James C. Vanderkam, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and Early Christianity," in Bible Review, Feb. 1992, pp. 16-23; Alan R. Millard, "Re-creating the Tablets of the Law," in Bible Review, Feb. 1994, pp. 48-53; Michael D. Coogan, "The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew," in Bible Review, June 1994, pp. 44-48, 55; John P. Meier, "Why Search For the Historical Jesus?", in Bible Review, June 1993, pp. 30-34; Pamela J. Milne, "Feminist Interpretations of the Bible, Then and Now," in Bible Review, Oct. 1992, pp. 38-43; "The Catholic Church and Bible Interpretation," in Bible Review, Aug. 1994, pp. 32-35; "Scholars Face Off Over Age of Bible Stories," in Bible Review, Aug. 1994, pp. 40-43, 54; Carolyn Osiek, "The Shephard of Hermas - An Early Tale that Almost Made it into the New Testament," in Bible Review, Oct. 1994, pp. 48-54; Christian History: How We Got our Bible, Issue 43 (vol. XIII, No. 3), 1994; J. Reuben Clark, Why the King James Version, Classics in Mormon Literature, Deseret Book, 1979; Jacob Milgrom, "The Dead Sea Temple Scroll," in Paul R. Cheesman & C. Wilfred Griggs, eds., Scriptures for the Modern World, Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, BYU, vol. 11, pp. 61-73; C. Wilfred Griggs, ed., Apocryphal Writings and the Latter Day Saints, Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, BYU, vol. 13, 1986; Harold Scanlin, The Dead Sea Scrolls & Modern Translations of the Old Testament, Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndal House Publishers, inc., 1993, pp. 15-38, 107-140 for excellent discussion of textual criticism and the impact the scrolls have had on Bible translations, and books of sacred scriptures. This is just to list a small list of the ever-growing realization of this situation.
Greg:
This Mormon theologian did no homework. None. Zero. Zip. Because any homework in this area reveals quite a different thing--99.8 percent purity of the Scriptures--far better than any other manuscripts from antiquity, bar none.
Kerry:
The above shows you are wishfully thinking. Don't you think it is time for you to quit squealing about others' lack of research, and begin your own?
Greg:
This misleading approach is appealing to Mormon's for a reason: They don't want the Bible passing judgment on their doctrine, because their doctrine doesn't come from the Bible. It comes from Joseph Smith. And it doesn't fit the Bible; it contradicts it.
Kerry:
Oh just boy, we can't hardly wait for a demonstration of this. Incidentally, I have just completed a thorough study of the early Mormons use of the Bible, and have found that in literally hundreds of places in the Journal of Discourses, the Mormon leaders would use the Bible, so you are flat wrong and refute by the evidence. Typical. You can find the article on my website at: http://www.cyberhighway.net/~shirtail/are.htm
Greg:
So, the easiest way to deal with this conflict is to give lip service to the authority of the Bible, saying, "Yes we believe it is inspired," and then they take away with the left hand what they give with the right, "but that doesn't matter, because we don't have the inspired Bible anymore. We've just got a cut-and-paste version that's nothing like the original. We do have the Book of Mormon, and the rest of Joseph Smith's writings, though, and my heart tells me these are inspired by God."
That's why you won't find Mormon doctrines in the Bible.
Kerry:
Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and the Gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands. I can find each and every one of these Mormon Doctrines in the Bible. Aren't you being rather churlish here?
Greg:
You'll find them in the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine of Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price and the writings of Joseph Smith. And you won't hear Mormons quote the Bible very much, except when it helps their case. Then the Bible suddenly takes on authority.
Kerry:
This is absolutely irresponsible on your part. I can prove you wrong any day of the week you want. Start with my article here: http://www.cyberhighway.net/~shirtail/predesti.htm
And tell me we don't use the Bible. Then go to here: http://www.cyberhighway.net/~shirtail/resurrec.htm
And note our understanding of the resurrection using many dozens of Bible scriptures. Then go to here: http://www.cyberhighway.net/~shirtail/graceof.htm
for more discussion using the Bible, etc., etc., etc. Greg your argument here does not hold water.
Greg:
That's the first reason why I think Mormonism's qualifier about the authority of the Bible is disingenuous: When they have a verse that seems to make their case--never mind if they lift it out of context, which they do frequently--then they use it. Otherwise, "It's not properly translated."
Kerry:
Coupled with further revelation this is precisely the best way to use the Bible. You have NO ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS to go by, so how do you KNOW the Bible is accurate?
Greg:
They'll point to the book of Ezekiel (37:19), for example, where the Lord talks about combining the stick of Judah with the stick of Joseph. This, they say, is a clear prophecy that the Bible ("the stick of Judah") is to be joined with the Book of Mormon ("the stick of Joseph") to comprise the full revelation of God. They ignore, of course, the context itself in which God actually gives the interpretation (v. 21), which has nothing at all to do with the Book of Mormon.
Kerry:
We do not ignore the context, the major problem here is you ignore the research done on this wonderful chapter in the Bible, but then, we have come to expect that from quickie thinking Christians who do not bother to even learn the nature of the Bible.
Greg:
Now, I guess they must believe that, even though the Bible in general can't be trusted, this particular verse has survived intact and has been translated properly, or else certainly they wouldn't be quoting from it. Odd.
Kerry:
Is it anymore odd than your illogical and completely unsupportable stance on what the Bible is and isn't?
Greg:
You see, this is cheating, ladies and gentlemen.
Kerry:
It is cheating to accept the fact that the Bible is incomplete, and lacks any original manuscripts and is inspired in some places but not in others?
Greg:
When the text speaks against the Mormon view, they dismiss it as not being translated accurately. But when it speaks for their view--at least when they can make it look like it does, on first glance--well, then the Bible's accurate. That's cheating.
Kerry:
With the other scriptures involved, as well as revelation from God today helping us understand the scriptures, it is far more realistic than your cheating stance that the Bible is the only word of God perfectly reliable, 98% accurate, etc., especially in light of the fact that you cannot defend your thesis.
Greg:
It's also cheating because they haven't shown academically that the manuscripts of the Bible can't be trusted because of the way they've been handed down.
Kerry:
But the scholars have as I have extensively quoted, you just ignore them, which is ALSO CHEATING.
Greg:
You'd think that if they were really concerned about God speaking through the Bible--
Kerry:
Here is your problem. We are concerned of having God speak DIRECTLY, not through a mere book. We are not Bibliolaters, but true Christians who accept guidance from the living God, not the dead letter book God you proclaim. A Mormon scholar, John Tvedtnes, recently shared a quote with me that I find to be very relevant here:
a quote from Protestant scholar Floyd V. Filson:
"It is possible, however, to stress the Bible so much and give it so central a place that the sensitive Christian conscience must rebel. We may illustrate such overstress on the Bible by the often-used (and perhaps misused) quotation from Chillingworth: "The Bible alone is the religion of Protestantism." Or we may recall how often it has been said that the Bible is the final authority for the Christian. "If it will not seem too facetious, I would like to put in a good word for God. It is God and not the Bible who is the central fact for the Christian. When we speak of `the Word of God' we use a phrase which, properly used, may apply to the Bible, but it has a deeper primary meaning. It is God who speaks to man. But he does not do so only through the Bible. He speaks through prophets and apostles. He speaks through specific events. And while his unique message to the Church finds its central record and written expression in the bible, this very reference to the Bible reminds us that Christ is the Word of God in a living, personal way which surpasses what we have even in this unique book. Even the Bible proves to be the Word of God only when the Holy Spirit working within us attests the truth and divine authority of what the Scripture says. Faith must not give to the aids that God provides the reverence and attention that belong only to God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Our hope is in God; our life is in Christ; our power is in the Spirit. The Bible speaks to us of the divine center of all life and help and power, but it is not the center. The Christian teaching about the canon must not deify the Scripture." Floyd V. Filson, "Which Books Belong in the Bible," (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1957) p. 20-21.
Greg:
that the only way to get at God's word is to have it translated accurately--they would do the homework. After all, if they say it's God's word, then you think they'd do the work to find out what has come down in tact and what hasn't survived.
Kerry:
We have done precisely that and keep a realistic stance on it. You, on the other hand, are completely at sea, the sad thing being you are entirely unaware of being so.....
Greg:
But they don't do that. In fact, when my friend pointed out to the Mormon that the Bible hasn't been changed and that it is authoritative, his information was just dismissed. She moved on to something else.
Kerry;
Of course! Why continue talking with one about a subject that person knows nothing of? Much like you here.
Greg:
It was just dismissed!
Kerry:
NOT the Bible, your friend's view of the Bible, two very different things.
Greg:
You'd think somebody who doesn't trust the Bible because they think it hasn't been properly translated,
Kerry:
Weren't you above just asking why such a big whoop-tee-do is made about this, and now here you are making a big whoop-tee-do about this? What gives? Can we ask for some consistency on your part here?
Greg:
when she's shown that it can be trusted because it is properly translated, would then say (if they were genuine in their concern here), "Well, I'm glad I've learned that! Now I can go to the Scripture with full confidence and draw the truth from it, and I can weigh the Book of Mormon against the Bible (since the Bible came first, after all)." But no, it's just ignored.
Kerry:
Since you cannot fathom the Basics of the Bible, you are hardly going to get much correct about anything else....
Greg:
You know, if you've talked with Mormons very much about the authority of their documents, when all of their quasi-apologetics for their books have been dismembered (and it's easy to do), they always fall back on an argument that you cannot dismember: "I believe in my heart that the Book of Mormon is really from God."
Kerry:
When Christians show our arguments are wrong then we can move on. You have completely missed the mark.
Greg:
We can respect such a belief. But can you see how, if that's what one ends up falling back on, it's disingenuous to pretend like there are evidences that really matter for your view and against the Bible's authority? If what you end up doing is ignoring contrary evidence, and you finally fall back on a defense that cannot be refuted, even in principle--because I can't change what you think is happening in your heart--then that shows you don't really care about the evidence at all. What you care about is protecting your own belief system, whether it's true or not. That is what's disingenuous. The evidence ultimately doesn't seem to matter.
Kerry:
Yes, as we have seen you do concerning the Bible..... I just saw this communication which I will share here, since it appears to be background information on scholars and the Bible that you are not aware of:

++An article from the New York Times (12/27/97) by Gustav Niebuhr:

"Ancient Christian Writings Debated ---

During Christianity's first four centuries, leaders of the faith collected the writings that would authoritatively describe Christ and his church while rejecting others written at the same time. The 27 chosen books, beginning with the Gospel of Mathew and concluding with Revelation, make up the New Testament. 'In these alone is proclaimed true doctrine of godliness,' declared Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria in 367, a man credited with first using the word canon to describe the Bible's contents. But these days, scholarly research and mass-market publishing are bringing to the public ancient texts that Athanasius and other early church leaders excluded. Some are works of popular piety (such as the Infancy Gospel of James, which relates a life of the Virgin Mary); others are books once condemned as heretical (such as the gnostic Gospel of Thomas, containing 144 sayings attributed to Jesus).

Renewed Interest

Certainly their appearance is another sign of how public interest in spirituality has followed scholarly research outside ecclesiastical boundaries. But more important, their growing availability brings to light a disagreement among some scholars over the value of these texts and what they reveal about early Christianity's development. Taking a provocative stance, a few scholars even talk about creating a new canon. And at a popular level, publication could for some end up blurring the line between what the church considers to be revealed truth and what it does not. Luke Timothy Johnson, a professor of New Testament of Emory University's Candler School of Theology, is concerned about the popular use of the nonbiblical texts. He said that some champions of those documents regarded the compiling of the New Testament as a politically motivated suppression of other texts instead of a natural process of defining Christian belief against heresy. [++Precisely what the New Testament itself warned against!-more of this some other time.] . . . . At a considerable distance from Johnson on this issue stands Robert W. Funk, an independent scholar who has called for the creation of a new canon that would include a wide range of the early writings about Jesus. 'We just need to put some of these things back inside the paradigm,' said Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars that has undertaken, with considerable controversy, a new quest for the historical figure of Jesus. Some of the groups translations of early documents have been published by Polebridge Press, which Funk also founded., But the seminar's work may be better known for "The Five Gospels"," published first in hardcover by Macmillan and lately of Harper-Collins in paperback. That book places the Gospel of Thomas alongside Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John. . . . . In addition, Ronald F. Hock, a professor of religion at the University of Southern California, said that since the 1970's, 'there has been a shift away from New Testament scholars being solely interested in the New Testament.'' He added, 'The distinction between canonical and noncanonical has disappeared, at least among scholars.' . . . Funk said that when speaking to church groups, he finds people open not only to nonbiblical texts but also to discussion of theological questions far beyond Christianity's conventional bounds,. The canon, he said, 'represents the orthodoxy that won out in the fourth century.'' But it can no longer be preserved, he said. Johnson agrees that many scholars interested in recovering 'alternative voices' from Christianity's early days already say that the canon's status as divinely inspired is irrelevant. 'The new scholarly orthodoxy is, in the beginning there was diversity,' Johnson added." Long Beach [Calif.] Press-Telegram, (12/27/97) pp. A1, A6.

Greg:
By the way, there's one other point that could be offered here. When a Mormon says, "The Bible's inspired insofar as it has been properly translated," your first question should be, "Do you mean to say that if the Bible has been changed, it shouldn't be trusted?" They're going to say, "Of course it shouldn't be trusted if it's been changed." Then ask this question, "How many times has the Book of Mormon been changed?"
Kerry:
The changes in the Bible is not the problem. The problem is there is no original manuscripts, and many places in the Bible where uninspired men add or deleted things. The Dead Sea Scrolls PROVE this.
Greg:
The Book of Mormon has been changed hundreds of times, as a point in fact.
Kerry:
In point of fact, you are plain wrong. The Book of Mormon has over a thousand changes, not just in the hundreds. You need to do some basic homework first.
Greg:
This is very well documented.
Kerry:
The changes are, not your incorrect numbers.
Greg:
We do have the original documents of the Book of Mormon
Kerry:
That's more than you can say for the Bible.....
Greg:
and we have the current ones and there are hundreds of changes. So even by their own rule, the Book of Mormon is a fraud. But that doesn't matter because Mormons have a burning in their hearts.
Kerry:
And true to form, you set up an incorrect argument, with incorrect information, and come to incorrect conclusions. Were you half as well read in any of the relevant Mormon scholarship on this, you would see why this argument really bothers no one.
Greg:
And that shows why it's so dangerous to depend on feelings alone when issues of eternal truth are at stake.
Kerry:
Feelings are not the only thing. My goodness what touchiness you possess concerning God helping folks with knoweldge as he promised in the very book you profess to believe in!